Key Points:
A NSW Court has found a company and its directors guilty
of giving the Environment Protection Authority misleading
information in its Annual Return, sending a powerful message that
information given to the EPA must not be false or
misleading.
The decision in EPA v Wyanga Holdings; EPA v Cauchi [2014]
NSWLEC 68 demonstrates the importance for EPA licence holders, and
anyone else who provides information to the EPA, of ensuring that
the information they provide to the EPA is not false or misleading,
not only in what it says but what it doesn't say.
A problem with the Annual Return
Wyanga Holdings operated a quarry on the NSW north coast. Its
EPA licence for the quarry specified a maximum annual extraction
limit of 50,000 tonnes. However, the evidence indicated that Wyanga
extracted almost twice that amount in the relevant year.
